Most
people grow up knowing their first cousins, and some also know their second
cousins. But since very few of us have the opportunity of knowing our great-great-grandparents
or the siblings of our great-grandparents, we have little chance of knowing third
cousins or beyond. Sometimes we might meet them at a family reunion, but even
there we might not be able to state exactly how they are related to us.
It’s
only recently, with the ready availability to do online research through such
tools as ancestry.com or the Internet, that we can document our relationships
to these more distant cousins. And the even more recent availability of DNA
analysis helps us to find those distant cousins, although we still sometimes
struggle to find out exactly how we are related to the individuals which are
identified through our common DNA.
One
of the advantages that I have is that I have is that most of my ancestors have
been in this country, and in particular in New England, since the 1600s, and
that I have been able to document most of them. As I noted in a recent post
(*1), I have identified over 1000 direct ancestors who came in those early days.
That represents roughly 5% of all the individuals who came to New England
during that period of time. So, if I find that someone else has family
connections back to colonial New England then there is a good chance that one
of their family lines will overlap with mine and there is a distant cousin
relationship. In particular, since my family lines are concentrated in
Connecticut, if someone has an ancestral line back into colonial Connecticut, I
can be pretty certain that I can find such a connection. Here are a couple of
examples of those connections.
A Close Friend in PA – I’ve known Bob
for over 40 years. We go to the same church, sang in the choir together, sang
in a men’s quartet for a number of years, and for the past several years have
been in a small men’s group that meets every other week for breakfast. A few
years ago, he said to me that he didn’t know much about his ancestors, not even
knowing where his grandfather was born. Besides finding out that his grandfather
was born in Wales, I checked out the other branches of his family line. I noted
to him:
“A couple of your
ancestor lines went back into Connecticut, so I decided to see if they might
intersect with the extensive family tree I have there. … Your great*3 grandmother
was Amy Lewis (1785-1855). Her mother was Mary Terrill. Mary’s grandfather
(your great*6 grandfather) was Daniel Terrill (1688-1750). But Daniel is also
my great*7 grandfather, making you my 7th cousin, once removed.”
There
were also two other lines which intersected with my family tree, so Bob was
also my 8th cousin, once removed, and my 10th cousin,
once removed.
Another Church Member – About a year
ago I was talking to an elderly member of our church, Mary Jane, about
genealogy. While her roots are in the Pennsylvania German community (and mine
are not), she said that her husband (who was deceased) came to PA from Staten
Island and that she believed that before that they were from New England. His
last name was Cole. But he was born in 1931 and so would be found in the 1940
census. With only that to go on, I was able to trace back his Cole line not
only to Connecticut, but to find a connection in my hometown of Wolcott, CT. As
I noted to her in a subsequent email:
“David’s 4th
cousin (twice removed) was Francis Cole (1869-1936). He married a woman by the
name of Martha Upson who is my 4th cousin (4 times removed) and they
lived in my hometown of Wolcott, CT. Francis and Martha’s great-granddaughter
[Patty Atwood] lived only a few miles from me and was in the same grade as my
sister.”
A co-worker – One of my
co-workers for many years, Ron, is retired and we are both part of a group of
retirees which meets for lunch once a month. He had noticed my interest in
genealogy and said that he was also interested. His ancestor, Jasper Crane, was
the founder of the first church in Newark, NJ. But I also knew that the people
who founded that city had come from New Haven, CT, first, and had started
Newark to be a “better theocracy”. With that in mind, I looked to see if there
were any connections in New Haven, where many of my ancestors first settled.
Here is what I wrote to him:
“Just confirmed at
least one way that we are cousins. Your ancestor Jasper Crane who was in New
Haven before he went to Newark is my great*10 grandfather. His daughter,
Phoebe, married a Canfield who through a long line of Canfields, eventually
married a Northrop. My paternal grandmother’s mother was Caroline Northrop. So,
you are my 11th cousin.”
A Landmark House – Just north of
where we live is a house that sits on top of a hill right off the NE Extension
of the PA Turnpike in Palmerton. Recently there was an article posted on the
website of a local TV station about this house and its owner (*2). It said:
“PALMERTON, Pa. - People driving to Palmerton will probably
notice a house on a hill. It is called Marshall's Hill, after General Elisha
Marshall. Elisha Marshall's father was Chauncey Marshall, a Connecticut
Yankee entrepreneur. His mother was Mary Hotchkiss Ward Marshall.”
I’ve
seen that house myself every time I am driving south on I-476 and wondered
about it. I noticed that the man who built it had roots in Connecticut and I
thought that the name of his mother had some familiarity to me. I was able to
do some quick research on her ancestral line and then to document a few minutes
later about the connection to me. Here is what I posted:
“When I saw that
Elisha Marshall’s parents were from Connecticut, I did some quick checking. I
have found that Elisha is my 5th cousin (several times removed). His
mother was Mary Hotchkiss Ward and her mother was Abigail Wilcox. His great*4
grandfather was William Wilcoxson and William is also my great*10 grandfather.”
Daughter-in-law
The
above examples are all connections to people here in eastern PA where I now
live. But I was surprised to discover a connection even farther afield – and one
that I would totally not have expected. Our son went to college at Taylor
University in Indiana. There he met a girl that first summer whom he dated and
then married after graduation a few years later. When I began doing genealogy
research a few years after that, after building out my own tree and my wife’s
tree, I decided to build out her family tree as well.
I
was surprised when I found that her maternal grandfather’s middle name was
Merrill – a name that was from his grandmother’s maiden name. The Merrill name
that also appears in my family tree. Her ancestor was born in Ohio, but in
tracing that family line back, I quickly found it came from a family line in
Connecticut. There, a few generations earlier, it merged with my own Merrill
family line. My son had married my eighth cousin!
Conclusion
There
is nothing particularly special about my family tree all these connections. The
farther back we can trace our family lines, the more our family tree spreads
out and the greater the possibility that all of us our connected in some fashion.
It’s only because my ancestral lines have been in New England for so long and
because records there are relatively good that I have been able to fill out
most of my family lines back for 10 generations or so.
But
still, it’s exciting to me when I am able to document the above types of
connections. And that’s just part of what makes genealogy so interesting. Who
would have thought when I started doing this that I could call some of my church
friends, co-workers, and even my daughter-in-law by the appellation “cousin”!
Such fun!
Notes:
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